Facebook — and the cost of losing it
Facebook began with a simple, brilliant idea, a local online directory for students. It let people build profiles, stay in touch, make friends, and share tips, recommendations, and experiences on campus.
The idea spread quickly. First to other universities, then to a wider audience, and eventually across the world. Once internet access became common, that growth was inevitable. As the platform grew, so did the costs. Advertising became the obvious way to cover them, and I’ve never had a problem with that. It’s business. We still have the choice to ignore adverts or engage with them.
What I do have a problem with is how easily an account can now disappear.
I was suddenly removed from Facebook. I appealed, but the appeal was rejected. Fifteen years of content, connections, friends, and photos vanished. So did the hours I spent administering five other pages.
I was ‘hacked’, Facebook knew at the time by sending me a code to use if I was trying to login and to ignore the code if it wasn’t me trying to login! I now have the logs to show it was done using a PC - I use a Mac.
The post that triggered it was either on my account or posted in my name. It was not reviewed by a person, but by an AI bot. And there is no real way to speak to anyone at Facebook. Even the new Verified badge appears to send users back to a bot when something goes wrong.
When I started looking for answers, I found thousands of others in the same position: disabled accounts, rejected appeals, and no human contact. One person I found had lost 20 years of content. I was never a prolific poster. It was mostly a bit of fun. But I did take my admin work seriously. For anyone running a business through Facebook, this kind of loss could be devastating.
I’ve now created a new account so I can regain admin access to a charity page. But I’ve locked down my personal profile so tightly it barely feels worth having. I’ll miss the comments, the interaction, the squirrel photos, the caravan trip updates, and the posts where I laughed at my own mistakes.
What worries me most is how far this could go. A friend who works in community care was surprised she had never heard of someone taking their own life after losing an account that had become their whole world, because of a decision by a bot, It sounds extreme, but for some people, it may not be far from reality.
